Colorado’s Gart family and the ski industry pioneer Andy Daly have sold a majority interest in Powderhorn ski area on the Grand Mesa to Utah-based Pacific Group Resorts.

Pacific Group Resorts, or PRGI, is chaired by Vern Greco, the former boss at Park City, Steamboat and Purgatory ski areas. The company hosts about 1 million skier visits a year at four resorts it owns in Maryland, Vancouver, Virginia and Vermont and a ski area it operates in New Hampshire. The company also runs golf courses, resort restaurants, recreation  amenities and lodges that can sleep 4,000 visitors. 

The Garts and Daly first deployed PRGI in 2017 to run the ski area’s “Mission: Affordable” season pass campaign, which cut season pass prices to $249 a year as a way to get more skiers invested in the 1,600-acre ski area. 

A year later the owners brought in PRGI to manage the entire ski area. That year, the resort owners also announced they were signing on Denver’s Zoma Capital — the investment fund controlled by Ben Walton, the grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton, and his wife, Lucy — as an equity partner to help develop the ski area. That partnership noted the recent designation of the Grand Mesa as an opportunity zone under the Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which offers tax breaks to investors who park development money in economically distressed areas.

Zoma Capital is no longer involved and that opened the door for PRGI to come in and operate the ski area while the Garts and Daly shepherd development of nearly 800 acres at the base of the ski area, which is a 30-minute drive up from the Colorado River and the town of Palisade. 

Read more from Jason Blevins at ColoradoSun.com

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported news organization dedicated to covering the people, places and policies that matter in Colorado. Read more, sign up for free newsletters and subscribe at ColoradoSun.com.